Snap Stee-O's It started with a backpack at the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, a backpack that contained a bomb. While the authorities focused on the wrong suspect, a serial bomber planned his next attacks, two abortion clinics, and a lesbian bar. But this isn't his story, it's a human story, one that I've become entangled with. The victims of these brutal attacks were left to pick up the pieces, forced to explore the
gray areas between right and wrong, life and death. Their once-ordinary lives and mine change forever. It kind of gave me a feeling of pending doom. In all the while, our country found itself facing down a long and ugly reckoning with a growing threat. Far-right, homegrown, religious terrorism. Listen to Flashpoint starting July 25th on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The Erikara, a planes people, they call it the Black Wind. To the rap hall, to the work of the whirlwind woman. Donados have always held a special place in the American imagination because more of them happen here than anywhere else. 75% of all tornadoes occur in the continental United States. 1200 a year. Dozens of people perish every tornado season with some folk. When they get excited to make sure the vortex they don't run away, they run toward. Rule Michigan.
As a kid in school, the film they make us watch with pretty lady and yellow dress, instructs us that if you see a tornado, go immediately to the basement or to the middle of a sturdy building or to a ditch, but no one in our trailer park has a basement, a sturdy building or a ditch. I look up from our front yard and off in the far distance the sky trembles. The late gray cloud boils, snakes a long tendle to the ground then instantly turns black.
I hear thunder cracking, mothers father shouting as if its senses are panic. This new monster pulses, rise and advances. Me, silent screaming, not moving frozen. Watching, watching, watching. Before shifts, turning, laughing, deciding to maybe destroy someone else's lives instead. There's too far way to hear the air shouting. But I hear them anyway. In the folk and town with houses, with basement, with safe rooms, some of them make fun of us for living out here. And trailers.
And right then, I cannot help it wonder why monsters drop from the sky to attack us. Instead of them, today in Snap Judgment, instead of running away, we're going directly to the heart of the beast. A Snap Judgment, blackbuster special, the black wind. My name is L'Washington, no. Godzilla doesn't only destroy Tokyo when you're listening to Snap Judgment. We begin, internatal country, up close and personal in our story.
In fact, both of the stories you're about to hear today come from Snap Judgment's unofficial weatherman, John Foseal. Snap Judgment. So did you know that you're the cool teacher? No. I'm the cool teacher, oh really? Meet Craig Walter, the cool teacher, famous at Wyndham High School for his jokes, for how worked up he got during the lectures in his birth sciences class, for letting his students freeze bottles of mountain dew in his mini-fridge so they can make slushies.
But on this one field trip in 1999, Craig became legendary. That year, Craig took his meteorology class on a field trip from their small town in southern Minnesota to the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma. That's like, hey, not many high schools have a meteorology class, so why not bring them to where the experts are in the back by mine? I'm like, yeah, they'd be great if we saw some tornadoes, be great if I ran into some of these famous tornado researchers.
Craig was obsessed with tornadoes. He gone chasing on his own once or twice, and his principal knew how passionate he was. So before he let Craig take 12 teenagers into the middle of tornado alley, at the beginning of tornado season, he made Craig promise. My principal said, you know, you're not going to be storm chasing. You can't be storm chasing because you're going to put kids in danger. I don't remember the exact words but basically I would be fired if I took kids storm chasing.
And I remember distinctly saying to him, here's a deal on if you ever been to Oklahoma, but it's really flat and if there's a tornado, we might be able to see from our hotel. In my own mind, it wasn't a solid no. I'm not going to go storm chasing. Because if there was... It sounds like a pretty solid no. Yeah. Two big white bands full of chattering high school students set off across the prairie on a 12 hour road trip.
I had never been like further south in Spirit Lake, so it was all new stuff seen the terrain, like heading down there and all of a sudden when you see red dirt for the first time and that's all you see in Oklahoma. Benny Collins, Jr. was a real weather junkie. I still have a journal where I would watch all the local meteorologists on TV and write down what they're forecasting. 17, he was quiet and shy, in fact, voted quietest and shyest in his high school yearbook.
You are a quiet and reserved guy, but it all changes when you start talking about meteorology. Oh, God. Thanks. Um. Off the record, how do I silence my watch? Throw it. Two of Benny's best friends, Danielle McEwan. We knew Benny was going to be in the class and we thought it would be fun and Sarah Trotter. Two, like, we loved Mr. Walter. We're also on the field trip. Honestly, for me, I think it was a chance to miss like three days of school.
It wasn't like I was super excited to learn more about weather. Growing up in a small town, I mean, we didn't really get out very much like my dad came along as a shaper on, so it was just really exciting. The students wake up early on May 3rd, 1999, at the roadside motel where they spent the night. I referred to it as the luxurious super eight motel in Norman, Oklahoma. So we get up and looking at the weather channel, never forget it was a 20% chance that thunderstorms that day.
So it's like, you know, you know, there's going to be no weather. Oh, well, Craig in the shaperown, Sarah's dad, heard the students into their two vans and drive to the National Weather Services Storm Prediction Center. The SPC is in a bland government building. If it wasn't for the framed pictures of tornadoes on the walls, you'd have no idea what these people did or that they were the best in the world at doing it. So you felt like you were in Hollywood? Yeah, exactly.
It was, this is where the magic happens. It felt like they maybe didn't give a lot of kids tours because I feel like they were pretty excited to be talking to us when we first got there. So we knew that something was up because there was an energy. It's just like, there's something really weird going on. And so we go into this room and it's packed with meteorologists. One of the forecasters on duty has called a special meeting. It seems like things are really cooking in the atmosphere.
Warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico is pushing up against cold air from the north. And at that point, he saw that the winds were a lot stronger or a lot, which mean there's going to be more wind shear later in the day to interact with the boundary of the season. I said, yeah, can you put some of that stuff with they just said, could you please tell us in layman's terms like high school meteorology version? Thunderstorms are coming. And not just thunderstorms.
And he stated he's like, you will be able to throw a rock from one tornado to another in Oklahoma. Oh my gosh, this is crazy. In the back of my mind, I'm looking at the maps and everything. I'm like, well, if it's that close, if we happen to be sitting in the parking lot of the luxurious super eight hotel, there's a good chance we're probably going to see a tornado. And hey, we were at our hotel. There was nothing else we could do. You're already like making excuses in your life. I was.
But then of course, hearing the voice of my principal saying, you will not go storm chasing. Yes, sir. Greg's class moves on to their next stop. The parking lot of the University of Oklahoma for a meeting with the world renowned Doppler on wheels. The Doppler wheels truck, which was the radar truck of radar trucks. These trucks looked like they were big white trucks with like satellite dishes on them. I guess is what I would say. Two big flatbed trucks with radar mounted on the back.
From out behind one of them comes scientist Herb Stein. Ready to give the students a tour. I asked him, I said, you know, Herb, you guys going out today. And he replied, no, there was no reason to go out because there was just a minimal chance of thunderstorms. In my mind, I'm like, can I share what I just learned at the storm prediction center? I mean, if you're going to be able to throw a rock from one tornado to another, you would think that this truck would be getting gasped up right now.
So I, as well, I heard that there was maybe a decent chance of maybe some thunderstorms that he goes, and he's giving me a look like, okay, high school teacher calm down. Herb Stein pulls one of the two cell phones off his belt and makes a call. All of a sudden his whole demeanor just changed. He was like, you know, guys, I'm really sorry. We're probably going to have to cut this a little short. I want to get out on the road. Our initial feeling was disappointment.
Like, oh, we're not going to get to see anything else, you know? Danielle and I were discussing it and we're like, we should ask them if we can go with them. And I think we just blurted it out. Can we go with you? Definitely never thought they would say yes. His reply was yes. He's like, well, yeah, you said you guys want to go along? My mind was like a slot machine and all the numbers were spinning around and it was like, okay, do I want a job? Do I want to keep employed? Do I not?
Well, I'm going to have the opportunity of a lifetime and I'm like, we can't. I want to. I want to. Don't get me wrong with it. I kind of promised the principal that that was not going to happen on this trip. Still, Craig knew that being with the Doppler trucks could actually be a good thing. They'd be tracking the storms the entire time for one. They know exactly when a tornado was on the ground and where. And they keep a safe distance a couple miles.
And then when other driver Paul, he came up behind me. Paul, Sarah's dad, the shaperone. He's a parent. I know what your dad's a, you know, your kid is going on this trip. And he said, could be in a ****. The next thing I know, we were leaving. These guys were packing up and they were going whether we were going with them or not. Mr. Walter always played Aero Smith. Duce is our wild, the whole big one, CD. He wouldn't let anyone listen to anything else.
The two white bands, full of high school students, take off, crack at the wheel, passing farm towns and endless fields baking in the heat. Up ahead, the two Doppler trucks. And in the distance, Pylui cumulus clouds soar upwards. The whole convoy drives parallel to the growing storm. I remember driving around in this one town and there was like a family reunion or there was some celebration thing going on in the city park.
Just like, do these people know what's going to possibly happen here, you know, within the next couple hours or so? The siren started going off and you know, it's that eerie sound. Then it's kind of like, here we go. Your instinct say, I need to find shelter and I'm driving students to this. You kind of second guess it. Again, your internal instinct say, hey, we need to find a basement. But he keeps going, following the Doppler trucks. An hour goes by, 90 minutes.
Finally, outside of the town of Lotton, the Doppler trucks come to a sudden stop on the side of the road. Benny and the other students jump out of the bands. It was a hot and sunny day out in the prairie and I remember smelling the prairie grass and the Doppler wheels is off to the side when they put the radar trucks down and started scanning. That's when it kind of set in for me that we're really doing it out here.
One of the students is recording video as Craig and Paul wrangle everyone to the side of the road. The wind is picking up. Five or six miles away, a giant rotating cloud is beginning to lower from the base of the storm. The mesocycle. We're looking at a mesocycle right there. The rotation is really tight. I remember Benny like, yelling and I remember everyone that knew what they were seeing, being really like, oh my gosh, this is happening. Come on, come on, baby, get down. I know you want to.
Think of an upside down layer cake. The first layer they see, the mesocycle, then a second layer drops down below that, a dark gray wall cloud. Then the final layer. The next step, touch down boys. And next you know, we have a tornado. Across the fields, a wispy gray finger reaches down and touches earth. It's like a hard-to-beating, so rapidly that you feel you're shattered your sternum or your breastbone. A small, ropey tornado about as wide as a swimming pool kicks up dirt.
It doesn't look like how I feel like it looks. I feel like it's just more like, it just gets really black and it just kind of comes down. It's almost like it's distorted until it's not, right? It's just like all of a sudden it was like, bam, there it is. That's the tornado. The tornado is on the ground for less than a minute before it dissipates and winds back up into the clouds. Just enough time for a picture. We took selfies with the tornado before selfies existed.
We had pictures of all of us with the tornado in the background. Well, that's just a picture. I know, but do you know what I mean? It's like, look it. There's us in the tornado. Then the Doppler scientists invite the students into one of the trucks where they've gotten real-time scans of the tornado. They're able to see the precipitation, the wind speed, the tornado's internal structure. I don't think any of us thought that we'd see something like that.
So we see this tornado, it's incredible, and we think, wow, we actually did it. Okay, great. Let's pack it up. This is what we did. This was amazing and so glad we came and we saw one. I've got enough explaining to do already. The only thing is that in order for us to get back to Norman, the road that was going to take us is being compromised by severe weather. There was no way we're going to drag through that. Craig hadn't thought this far ahead.
But at this point, staying with the Doppler trucks is the safest bet. They pile back into their two vans and press play on Aerosmith as the Doppler's drive towards the next tornado and the next. Well, this escalated quickly, right? It legit was real life twister. I'm stepping down. Craig and his students face down the big one. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Black Wind episode.
When the last we left, high school science teacher Craig Walter and his class had hit the road with the world's top storm researchers. They found themselves in the middle of a giant tornado outbreak with no way out. Snap Judgment. The forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center was right. Full storms, multiple tornadoes. Like it was just a kind of a constant rush of take the pictures. That's great. Get back in the van. We're going again.
Benny even remembers seeing a tornado that had two vortices, a double twister. One large wedge tornado with this smaller one going around it. I remember that one being darker, like kind of like a bluish black. That is a classic roll. Look at the gust front. Right ahead of us. See all those clouds are coming down and curving. Throughout all of this, Craig is still teaching. Remember it's a field trip.
As they were forming, I just remember all the terminology being shouted out left and right and look at this and look at that and this is exactly what we're talking about. Look at that. Look at the shield cloud coming down. See how that bulb is out there. I'm almost positive that he made us take notes. Look at right there. Yeah. Look at right there. He has this little hole. Oh, look at it. Look at it. Oh, there it goes. There it goes. Look at the wall cloud. Look at that wall cloud.
They're sheltered. Right in front. What better way of having a textbook meet reality than that experience? Craig is driving, trying not to crash. There's a tornado over there or a tornado over there and I was like, okay, I got to stay focused and drive this van here. Every once in a while, he glances back nervously at his student's faces. I asked several times, you know, how's everyone doing? And, you know, of course, these are high school students. They can't show weakness around their friends.
And if they were scared, they didn't tell me. None of the tornadoes do much damage, but they do grow bigger and stronger as the storm moves along. And then finally, tornado number nine touches down. We stopped at that overpass and got up on top and watched it from a distance and it was just this gray mass. An enormous EF-5 tornado. Dark gray, nearly black, colored by all the debris it's sucking up. From their spot on the interstate miles away, all the students can hear is the rushing of wind.
It was so big that you could almost not see either side of it. I mean, it didn't even look like a tornado, really. But the Doppler guys and our teacher kept saying, you know, no, that is, it's a confirmed tornado and it's gigantic. Up close, storm chasers recorded tracking towards Oklahoma City, blowing up power transformers along the way. Oh my goodness, that thing is huge. Half mile to a mile wide at this time.
The Doppler scientists invite the students back inside the cabin of one of their trucks. They've just documented something incredible. Someone said, you've just now witnessed the fastest wind speed on the face of the earth. 318 mile per hour winds whipping baseball-sized hail and gravel and lumber and cars. Swimming up freight trains and 18 wheelers, destroying homes and buildings in less than 30 seconds. It's just pretty unimaginable to be able to comprehend what that was.
And I don't think it was even raining or storming whatsoever where we were, right? No, no, it was sunny and pristine. Greg and his students get back in the vans, but now it's starting to get dark. The Doppler trucks are far ahead, barely visible, driving into a curtain of rain and wind. The teacher and me, the adult and me just said, we've had enough. I need to make sure these kids are safe so we need to get to our hotel.
Chasing the storm had actually led them back in the direction of the luxurious super-rate hotel. I just want to get to our hotel. I just want to get to our hotel and hoping that it's still standing. On the road back, they start seeing debris, lumber, housing insulation, downed power lines. All of a sudden, the cement interstate turned into a mud road with tire tracks through it. Lots of sirens and emergency vehicles and this and that and police and it's just nonstop.
There was a car that had been tossed and it was like the front end and the back end were all mashed up and there's EMT all around it. Remember Walters pulled over because he was an EMT and he wanted to go check it out and make sure everything was fine. The EMTs tell Craig that they've just recovered the body of a child that had been pulled from its mother's arms by the wind. He returns to the van.
And it's kind of like just, you know, moment of science, I call it cow and my students, again, you know, I'm worried about, you know, their mental state. You know, reality is really is, you know, hitting me. If it's hitting me, it's got to be hitting them and the reality is, people are dying now. I think it was, I opening for all of us. Was devastating. I just prayed that people found shelter and were heating warnings. It's not much else you can do than hope for the best. We just felt down.
Definitely much more somber. That was the first time I had felt quote unquote, homesick. It was like, okay, I'm ready to go home. I want to see my mom and dad and my house and, you know, just be home. I just remember I just had this complete sinking feeling when we got to the hotel, a Koni-Matak. The motel's roof is sprinkled with wood and leaves and trash, stuffed around by the storm. The parking lot is full. Whew, lots of cars that were damaged. The students head for their rooms.
Craig continues to unload the van and as he's closing the door, a guy approaches. His car has bits of wood plastered all over it. He's holding his kid. He asked if we had been chasing the storms, I told him, I'm sorry sir, I just don't feel comfortable answering these questions. I felt guilty. Yet all I was like, you know, one minute we're high five and because we saw these tornadoes and now I'm talking to a guy that probably lost everything. He's just like, hey, it's okay.
He said, we live in Oklahoma and he asked where we're from. And I said, we're from Minnesota and I remember he's like, yeah, you guys have to deal with mosquitoes. We deal with tornadoes. This is what we deal with. Hopefully you guys learn something to help us. Later that night, around 1030, the students call their parents. Danielle is sure her mom will be asleep.
And my mom picked up on the first ring and I said, mom, I don't know if you knew this but there was a huge tornado outbreak in Oklahoma and she just starts screaming, yes, yes, I've seen it. We've been watching the news all night. Yes, of course, yes, we know. Are you okay? Are you okay? And I'm like, I'm fine. She's like, oh my gosh, you know, it's all over the news. It's a huge deal. And, you know, us just being like, oh. Good evening, 76 tornadoes. Five states in less than seven hours.
More than 40 people have been killed more than 600 people injured. More than 1,000 homes are ripped from their foundations. On their way home to Minnesota, Craig and the students drive past whole towns where the buildings have been turned into piles of lumber and siding. Some Minnesota students are back home tonight after getting caught in those killer Oklahoma tornadoes. The wind of teenagers were on a field trip. Do you remember like half the town was at Mr. Walters' house when we got back?
It was like a well-coping party for us. The vans pull up to Craig's house after the 12-hour drive. All the parents are there waiting for us. Hugged us a little harder than just a three-day normal trip, right? Yeah. Now, snappies, unless you question the educational value of this trip, note this. Of the 12 students on Craig Walters' 1999 field trip, two went into meteorology, including Benny. Another became the town of Windom's emergency manager.
Craig was not fired, in fact the trip and the press had generated made him look like the coolest high school science teacher ever. He got to go in year after year until 2016 when he changed schools. Have you tried to do the trip again at your new school? Yes. Oh, I tried. And, matter of fact, I had a conversation this morning with my superintendent and, yeah, there's no way. Up next, we'll finally take you inside of tornado. It is not what you expect. Stay. Take it.
Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Black Wind Special. My name is Kim Washington. And our last story was about running toward tornadoes. Our next story is about a family running from one for decades. Snap touch me. 2012 was the year of the big Dugin family reunion in Minnesota. And Sue Dugin-Moline had volunteered to pick up her cousin Don from the airport. She hadn't seen him in years. And I thought, well, this is a really awkward wedding.
I'm going to talk to Don about, you know, don't know what he's been doing. He's divorced. Haven't seen him forever, you know. Well, as we were driving, probably about a mile, mile and a half from my mom and dad's apartment, I just said, hey, Don, do you ever think about the tornado? That's all I think that's all I said. Do you ever think about it? And it was like a fire hose let loose. And he started talking. And by the time we got to my mom and dad's apartment, he was bawling.
He just got out of the car. He's just bawling. He said, we went home. And we never talked about it. In 1969, Sue's grandmother, cousin, and sister raw killed in a giant F4 tornado, while on vacation at a lake outside the town of Outing, Minnesota. You know, even with all these survivors being my family, we didn't really sit around and talk about it. We just referred to it, the tornado. Sue's mother had watched her sister drown that day.
My mom would just tell her story that little one minute and watching Becky drown story. Sue's dad had been at the hardware store in town. My dad had a sense of guilt that he hadn't been there to save people as if somehow you can do anything in over 200 miles an hour or a wind. It's illogical. Sue only brought up the tornado directly with her parents one time. And I said to my dad, you know what I'd like to do? It was just the interview, everybody who was there.
Because I thought, from a distance, we could talk about it now. And he just said, why would you want to do that? And it was the inflection in his voice. Why would you want to do that? He didn't even want to go there. And so I never did. But a couple of years after the reunion, Sue's parents both passed away. And she decided it was time. 2018, 2019. I decided I am going to talk to everybody I knew who was still alive, who had survived it. And I always asked all of them the same 15 questions.
What do you remember about the weather on August 6th? What were you doing that day before it started? What do you remember thinking about while you were in the tornado? Did you experience any survivors built? She'd record the interviews using a little handheld tape recorder that I belonged to her dad. One of the first people she spoke to was her cousin Shane, now in his 50s, and Shane's mom, Priscilla. Shane says, you know that question about survivor's guilt? He said, I had that.
And his mom goes, oh, Shane, what are you talking about? And he says, mom, he told me to watch out for my sister that day. He was supposed to keep an eye on her, and she died. And he was seven. He had lived with that for 50 years, and it never told his mom. I thought, if for no other reason, that was worth doing this, just because he could say that. When Sue connected with the families of other victims, she found out that it wasn't just hers that it stuffed this memory.
Nancy across the lake, whose grandpa and aunt died, she was nine. You know, she has very clear memories. Nancy had been flung by the tornado's winds. And when she came down, she landed on her aunt's dead body. And she and shock, you know, she had some bad cuts and stuff, but she got up and started helping other people. I mean, what you do when you're in shock, how you just react, it's kind of surprising. So it was therapeutic for her. Oh, she, if the weather's bad, now she texts me.
Sue, I think a storm is coming. But she didn't know what he'd to talk to her. Now she could talk to Sue. And Sue could talk to her because she'd been there. I would say I probably had about a two-minute memory of this event, August 6, 1969. Sue graduated from high school earlier that summer. It was six weeks before her 18th birthday. We'd been up there since Sunday afternoon, and it got a little cloudy. I had my swimsuit on, so I know that it was warm enough to go swimming.
And middle of the afternoon maybe we started hearing somebody use the word tornado. It probably had been on the radio. I was sitting in the cabin about 30 feet from the lake with my aunt Priscilla, who was very, very pregnant. And I assured her that we were in a safe place because we were in a very low-lying area with steep hills on both sides of the lake. It would just jump right over us. The next thing I remember is people coming down from one of the upper cabins.
My family was running down the hill. They came in. My aunt tells me that I went around and slammed windows and closed windows. I have no recollection. But what I do remember is the neighbors from the cabin next door, the brockies, came in. And Dan Brockie was about my age. And all I remember when he and his mom came through the front door of the cabin, he said, tornadoes coming. And I would say within seconds, I'm on the floor. Like a rug had been pulled out from under me.
People say, did you hear it? Was it like a train? Everybody says the tornado sounds like a train. I don't remember hearing it. I remember seeing what I saw out the window, which was stuff blowing sideways. I saw a boat fly through the air. You know that's not supposed to happen. Then you realize the power of the storm that's coming at you. And this tornado was a mile wide. As it crossed this long lake, it picked up the water. I witnesses actually saw a lake bottom.
Fish rained down on the road above the lake. And then all that water dropped back down on top of Sue and her family. And from then on, it was fighting for air. There was nothing we could do. We were sucked underwater. And about the time you thought you couldn't breathe anymore, you'd get a gasp of air. And then you'd be sucked under again. As Sue struggled, this memory flashed into her brain of an assembly that happened at her high school right before graduation.
And the speaker was, I think, warning us students, X number of you will be dead by your 10-year reunion. And I thought, I'm going to die. I mean, it was just a given. And then all of a sudden, I popped up out of the water. I was riding on lumber from the cabins, just hanging on to something. And I did not see one single person. And I just remember yelling, God save us. God save us. And then I saw a head start to pop up. And I saw my uncle Terry. And I saw my friend Dale Carlson.
And I saw my aunt, my pregnant aunt Priscilla. And then my cousin Shane, we were the only five people I knew of that had lived. When does your memory and the initial memory that you had? It ends when, after I climbed up the hill, I helped my aunt Priscilla climb over a bunch of wood, because it was almost like wall to wall wood. You could almost walk on debris. And I got her up sitting with her sunshine. And so I went up the hill to the road, a little dirt road that ran that side of the lake.
I remember a lady walking toward me down the road, asking if she could help me. And all I said to her was that my swimsuit strap had broken. And she reaches inside, you know how women do. She pulls out a safety pin from somewhere. And she pins my swimsuit strap back together. So my swimsuit isn't falling off. Sun is bright. The day got hot. Beautiful day. I mean, the weather just changed. You know, you said everybody was kind of alone with their memories. And you brought them together.
Was that a healing? Oh, it was so healing. It was so good for us to talk. Did you just feel like you could just talk that it was the topic of the day or the week or whatever to just talk about everything that you had not talked about for 50 years. And then it was good, I think, for our families, our kids. And you know, they kind of understood what we had been through. You know, how I had lost my grandma, how I'd lost my sister. I mean, it's just good.
Details matter, you know, the information matters, the truth matters. Sue ended up interviewing hundreds of people about the tornado. I witnesses, first responders, the last living sheriff who'd been on the scene that day, the diver, who combed the lake for bodies. But she never got the one thing she was really looking for. Really what I was hoping for, I was hoping somebody had taken a picture. I wanted to see a picture of it. A picture of the tornado. The tornado? Why? I don't know. Why?
Just to kind of put a, I mean, I had pictures of the path of it, but I wondered if anybody from a safe distance had taken out their systematic camera and snapped a picture. Sue never actually got to see the tornado that hit her family and defined her entire life. Even if she'd stuck her head out of the cabin door for a peak, all she would have seen is a wall of black wind. It was too big. And so now she basically wants the same thing that Craig and his students wanted.
She just wants to see the thing. In fact, I met a lady for lunch two weeks ago. And her dad and her sisters and her mom had been crossing that highway six bridge. Right as the tornado was approaching, her dad stopped the car and he wanted to take a picture. And her mom said, get back in the car. And because that tornado was moving about 60 miles an hour. So if it's coming right at you, you probably wouldn't even know how close it was.
And so he jumped back in the car and they kept driving down highway six so they didn't get a picture. But they also saved their lives. If there was a tornado right now, like outside, and we were safe distance away, would you go out and look at it? I would want to see it. Absolutely. I would want to see it. Thank you, Sue, for sharing your story with a snap. Snap is please. Do not bother Sue with your tornado stories unless it was an EF4 or higher and bring receipts.
You know, if it didn't lift the house up, I'm not impressed. Isn't that awful? Sue's memoir is titled, The Lake Turn Upside Down and Find It at dukenbooks.com. The last, but not least, thank you, Windham High School. Thank you, thank you, thank you, especially Sarah, Biny and Danielle. Crystal Frank, another student on the trip. She shared her home video with us. This story would not have been possible without her.
Not for Mr. Walter. John, I think you wanted to say one more thing about Mr. Walter? Yeah, so Craig has been sending me videos. Right, we're day one of storm chasing and probably not gonna hear me because it's a darn windy, which is good. Yeah, in the past few weeks, he's been out on the road again, chasing tornadoes. He sent me this video of one he saw in Nebraska. Okay, we got tornado warning right here, right in this style right here. Six, six, six, rotating, it's on the missile cyclone.
Right on, Craig. Godspeed, stay safe to all the storm chases out there. The original score for this piece was by Renzel Goryo. It was produced by John the Seal.
The Black Wind Special, if you missed even a moment, no, a snap-juck in storytelling podcast, it's available right now, wherever you get your podcasts, Spotify, Apple Podcast, the iHeart Media app, Snap is brought to you by the team that it medley, disperses at the first sign of a tornado except the producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, he's out here flying kites.
Now there's Nancy Lopez, Pat with CV Miller, and assessment, Renzel Goryo, John the Seal, Shayna Shealy, Taylor DeCott, Flo Wiley, Boe Walsh, Mercedad, David XMA, Regina Barriaco. This is nothing news. No way is this a news in fact. You could hear that if tornado weather and load up your 1959 Cadillac ambulance, hurst with cameras, proton packs, PKE meters, and echo goggles only to realize too late.
You accidentally pack for ghost busting, not tornadoing, and you'd still, still not be as far away from the news as this is, but this is PRF.